The Shakespeare Authorship Question is Answered by the Author Himself in his Magnificent Monument of the Sonnets

2/ 1569: Thomas Underdowne, An AEthiopian History Written in Greek by Helidorus (translation)

3/ 1570: Edmund Elviden, Pesistratus and Catanea (poetry)

4/ 1571: Arthur Golding, Psalms of David (translation)

5/ 1573: Thomas Bedingfield, Cardanuss Comforte (translation)

6/ 1573: Thomas Twyne, Breviary of Britain . . . Containing a Learned Discourse of the Variable State and Alteration thereof, under Divers as well as Natural, as Foreign Princes and Conquerors, together with the Geographical Description of the same . . . (translation)

7/ 1574: George Baker, M.D., Oleum Magistrale – the Composition or Making of the Most Excellent and Precious Oil called Oleum Magistrale (medical; translation)

8/ 1577: John Brooke, The Staff of Christian Faith, profitable to all Christians … Gathered out of the Works of the Ancient Doctors of the Church . . .(translation)

9 1579: Anthony Munday, The Mirror of Mutability

10/ 1579: Geoffrey Gates, The Defense of the Military Profession

11/1580: Anthony Munday, Zelauto, the Fountain of Fame

12/ 1580: John Lyly, Euphues and His England (novel)

13/ 1580: John Hester, A Short Discourse upon Surgery [by] Master Leonardo Phioravanti Bolognese, translated out of Italian into English

14/ 1581: Thomas Stocker, Diverse Sermons of Calvin (translation)

15/ 1582: Thomas Watson, Hekatompathia, or The Passionate Century of Love (100 sonnets)

16/ 1584: John Southern, Pandora

17/ 1584: Robert Greene, Greene’s Card of Fancy, wherein the Folly of those carpet Knights is deciphered

18/ 1586: Angel Day, The English Secretary, wherein is contained a Perfect Method for the inditing of all manner of Epistles and familiar letters…

Hi Hank, Thanks for this unbelievably interesting list……Oh, but to have time to read, study & discuss it all. “But at my back I always hear times winged chariot hurrying near, and yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity.” Why does time have to come and bite us on the ass…..JUST WHEN WE HAVE BEGUN TO KNOW EVERYTHING!!! LOL 😉

Thanks, as always, Hank. Not to exaggerate this possibility, but we need to consider the possibility that some “dedications to” de Vere were ways of concealing that some of these works were actually written by de Vere. A book review in the current issue of the Renaissance Quarterly complains that scholars have been slow to come to terms with the huge variety of anonymous authorship at the time. It also refutes the “vast conspiracy” nonsense by pointing out that many insiders knew perfectly well who wrote the anonymous or pseudonymous work in question.

As everyone knows, de Vere was one of several recipients of dedicatory poems in The Faerie Queene.

Yes, Richard, the anonymity factor is a huge point and thanks for bringing it up. My goodness, even Shakespeare plays were anonymous in the 1590s until 1598. Why would the bestselling poet of Venus and Adonis & Lucrece not have his name on those quartos? Even the 1599 Romeo and Juliet was anonymous, I believe. And of course the “huge variety” of anonymous works you mention. Getting this issue straight will go a long way to clearing the way for a level-headed look at Edward de Vere and the “Shakespeare” works.

ON the first point, yes — there is the Hekatompathia or Passionate Century of Love, which Oxford may have written, or probably did; and The English Secretary as by Angel Day — I suppose you’ve seen the amazing work on that by Robert Brazil, who demonstrate that the whole thing was a spoof. And so on! Another fertile field for ongoing scholarship.

As for insiders knowing the true author, another good point. I find it amazing that at least one prominent Oxfordian feels that the Queen was unaware of Oxford’s authorship and, I believe that even Burghley and Walsingham would have been in the dark. In my view, that’s impossible. These were not just “insiders” — ! And then the matter of true insiders, of course — among writers, among experts in many fields, among the nobility. Insiders in each sphere.

In any case London was a “small town” then, and the percentage who could read reduced this population to a single section of Yankee Stadium….